Uncle Duke Herds Turkeys and Confronts Death for the First Time

My father with the turkeys, before we switched to Broad-Breasted Whites

Dear Beau Baylor,

You asked for stories. Here’s one.

When I was little, we raised turkeys. For years, in late May or early June,, we would get 5000 one-day-old turkey chicks—called poults-- delivered to the farm. They would arrive early in the morning, in cardboard boxes with holes punched for ventilation. Boxes alive with hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of chirping, helpless, hopeful, hungry, fuzzy little turkey poults which we raised for the Christmas market.

In preparation for this, we would have spent weeks cleaning out, spraying down and disinfecting the ‘turkey barn’ which had been unoccupied for the previous six months. My father and a couple of guys he hired and me and Bud Riley were always the crew responsible for the preparations in the turkey barn. We would mostly clean out the unused farm equipment and assorted junk that had accumulated there, chase out the mice and the racoons and the pigeons, power-wash the spider webs and sweep and rake the floor. We would cover the floor of the entire barn with dried pine shavings, 3”-4” deep and build about 20 circular pens, maybe 10 yards across, out of corrugated cardboard about 2’ tall. They were held up with wooden stakes pounded into the dirt floor, the cardboard stapled to the stakes.

When this was all done, we would then pull out the incubators/supplemental brooders, one for each pen. Day-old poults need to be warm. They require temperatures between 95°-100° for the first several days and in the 80° and 90° range for the first 6 weeks. So we had propane-fired ‘brooders’ which were maybe 8’-10’ diameter metal structures that were raised and lowered by rope pulleys. The poults could all get under them to get warm. There were no thermostats on them, so we raised them up and down to get the proper temperature.

Of course the brooders had been sitting for 6 months, so we had to get out all the wasps and the mud dauber nests, clean them up, hook them up to propane gas lines, unplug everything and fire them up. When they got to working, we were ready for all those poults. All 5000 of them.

We would take them out of the boxes, one by one, and ‘de-snood’ them. The ‘snood’ is the fleshy appendage above a turkey’s beak. It is typically removed on day-one to prevent pecking injuries, fighting and cannibalism. You’d use your thumb nail and finger pressure to remove it, kind of like pulling out a tick. It was a minor procedure but done 5000 times became a day’s work.

To speed up the story a bit, the turkeys stayed in the barn for about 6 weeks. At which time we herded them up and grabbed them, one by one, and loaded them in a fully screened hay wagon and hauled them out into a chosen, fenced field. But not before we had ‘de-beaked’ and ‘de-winged’ them.

The de-beaking was to prevent feather pecking, injuries and cannibalism. Turkeys could be pretty vicious. If one of them got a minor scratch or bleeding wound, the sight of blood would attract other turkeys to incessantly peck at the injury. De-beaking was necessary to blunt their sharp, potentially lethal pecking tools.

The de-winging was to keep them from flying over the 6’ fences. Domestic turkeys can’t fly, but without de-winging, they can lift off and soar pretty good. Easier to keep them inside the fence than to try and chase them down.

For both of these procedures, we used a method accurately called ‘hot-blade trimming’. It was antediluvian method, straight out of the Middle Ages but with electricity. It was a brutal procedure. There was a machine that had a guillotine type blade to it, and it was electrified and red hot. You’d grab the turkey as securely as you could and stick their beak in there, then push down on a foot pedal. The hot blade would descend and slice off half (more or less) of the top beak. There were blood vessels involved, so the machine was supposed to cauterize the wound. Done right, there wasn’t much blood. However, the turkey would be struggling for its life, and it was hard to get the beak and the blade lined up exactly right. So there was often considerable blood. In that instance you’d use the red-hot metal to burn the blood vessels shut. As long as it took. I have to say that the smell of burning blood and the sound of a screaming turkey are things you don’t forget.

You would then try to reposition this adolescent turkey, about the size now of a full-grown chicken, who was now in a full state of panic, and repeat the slicing/burning process on both wings. There was an acquired skill in doing it right, but I rarely accomplished it. It was an unpleasant task for all involved, and in no case were the turkeys ever cooperative. And I could never say I blamed them.

But that accomplished, we could then load all 5000 turkeys, though there were a great deal less than that by now. We’d lose some to common turkey diseases—avian influenza, coccidiosis and the like.  But many had suffocated when they periodically piled up, one upon another, in corners of the turkey barn during a thunderstorm. Lightning and thunder would spook their little turkey hearts, and we would get calls in the middle of the night to come help unpile turkeys. Hundreds piled on top of many dozens of lifeless others. Their social discipline was not good. And turkeys, frankly, are not very smart. They did a lot of things that were not in their own best interest.

But then to see all those birds running in their ungainly turkey trot, loose and free in that field for the first time, liberated and helter-skelter, was a joyous moment. For all of us. Their long turkey necks stretched out, and they gobbled loud and long, out of pure turkey joy for the fresh, Kentucky air and the endless blue sky. It was a glorious thing to behold, I tell you.

Frolicking in a new-found wonderland of knee-high fescue and wild-flowers, alive with an unsuspecting grasshopper population which was now leaping and flying about for its life and fighting a losing battle. It was open season on any and all field insects, toads, frogs and snakes. Turkeys were made for this. With or without a full beak.

I might add that our turkeys were all white. Technically, they were Broad-Breasted Whites. And they were now fully fledged, so the sight of them from a distance, gleaming white, fully populating a bright green, sun-lit, 50-acre field was worth six months of hard work, turkey shit and other minor inconveniences. It was the Haydon Turkey Farm in full resplendence. Yessir.

I mention all this about the turkeys and such only as background information for the story of Bud Riley. He was an essential, vital part of that Farm. And I intend to here memorialize him. I say it here now, forever and forever, Bud Riley was a friend of mine.

Bud was an older Black gentleman who lived on the farm during our turkey season. He stayed in a trailer on the property and was, by all accounts, my own included, a wise and benevolent soul. He had been in The War but never talked much about that. He told me he had lost something over there, but I never knew what it was.

He had a scraggly grey beard and always wore bib overalls with a red bandana sticking out of a back pocket. He wore a slouch hat, rolled his own cigarettes, played a mean harmonica and could rattle ‘the bones’ with the best of them.

He did some farm work and general maintenance jobs, saw after the horses and some cattle that we kept. But his primary job was to oversee and care for the turkeys. He lived with them day and night and was their primary provider and protector. He could tell when they were getting sick and would pull out individuals and isolate them in the sick pen. He understood their needs and could sense their moods. He’d try to calm them during storms and always kept a loaded shotgun nearby for poaching coyotes and marauding fox.

When he’d walk out amongst them, why they’d assemble all around him and look up at him like he was the Head Tom. He’d shout out a high-pitched turkey gobble, and they’d each and every one reply in unison. It was a spectacular joyful chorus. There was a genuine mutual admiration society going on there, and Bud was the Lord of the Flock.

 For my part, I’d follow Bud around from dawn to dusk if I could. I sought him out and stayed by his side whenever I had the opportunity. I was just a little kid, but he didn’t treat me like one. He tolerated me well and seemed to enjoy my company. We didn’t really talk all that much, but when we did, he actually looked at me.

He respected my father a lot and told me about some small acts of courage and kindness that Daddy had done on behalf of his family, particularly Munch and Billy. He told me a little about being him, when he was little. It had been hard, I could see, and it was still pretty raw.

One spring, I was about 8, give or take. It was about a week before the turkeys got there, and Bud was repairing the short, stubbed road to the turkey barn. This was before we got the tractor, so we had a pair of draft horses hooked up and pulling the wagon. I was of course along as his ‘partner’. His ‘right hand man’, he called me. We’d hook up the horses and drive them down to the creek that ran through the middle of the farm and collect big, flat rocks out of the creek bed. Then we’d hoist them up on the hay wagon, haul them back and drop them into the soft spots that had developed in the road.

I say ‘we’, but I wasn’t much help at picking up and loading slab rocks. But I could shove them off the wagon well enough, so I was of some use.

But all day I had been watching Bud as he managed the horses. And this had not escaped his notice. On the last run, he asked me if I’d like to drive the team back to the barn. Why boy, howdy! I certainly would, though I had no confidence that I could. But he showed me how to hold the double reins, how hard to pull and how to urge them on. He coached me how to get their attention and keep them moving in a straight line. And then he handed me the reins and sat down on the back of the wagon.

I took the reins tentatively, slapped them both a couple of times on the rump, and told them, in my most commanding voice: “Come on now. Get along.”

Well there really wasn’t much to do. The horses for sure knew the way back to the barn. But I giddyupped them a bit, slapped them half-heartedly and mimicked Bud’s banter to the two of them: “Move on now, Clem. Try to keep up, will ya.” And “Eyes on the road, Atlas. What you lookin’ at?”

We slow-walked on back to the barn under a late afternoon sky, into the descending sun. Just two of God’s children—four if you count the horses—after a hard day’s work. And I swear to you I was as full of myself as a little country boy could rightly be. ‘If the 3rd grade girls could only see me now,’ I thought. Standing in the front of that hay wagon, bouncing along that rocked road with the reins in my hands, I had never felt more fully Alive in my Life!

Bud had turned around, a big, old grin on his face, and I confess to you now, if there was ever a moment in time in which I stood taller and felt prouder, Brother, I don’t know when it was.

We got back to the barn, and I helped Bud unhitch the team, feed and curry them. And the next day we went back to the unglamorous, exhausting work of spreading shavings. The turkeys arrived shortly after that, then they got bigger, moved out of the barn and out to the field. Just the way it always was. I was doing my best to maneuver my way through the 4th grade. Waiting for a growth spurt to kick in, to get fast or smart, grow some hair, something, anything to make me remarkable.

It was about this time of year, early November, I think. And there was a sudden cold spell. It got close to freezing. Bud had a little coal oil stove in his trailer that had never been very dependable, and one night it just blew up. The trailer was small and over-crowded, there was a lot of fire and a lot of smoke. And Bud died. I didn’t get many details. I was just a little kid. I was just left with that stark, impossible reality. Bud died. It was a dark day.

I remember I cried most of that day. Then I got up the next day and cried some more. It was my first real introduction to Death. My grandfather had died, and even my sister, but I was only 4. Those deaths were like vague dreams to me. Others were sad, but I was just confused.

            When they’d died, my world was temporarily altered, but not changed really. I got up, got dressed, played, ate, took a nap, played some more, went in to see Sue in the casket in the living room, wondered when she would wake up, played some more, ate again, brushed my teeth and went to bed.

But when Bud died, the world changed irrevocably. I had just seen him yesterday. We nursed an injured turkey, he played his harmonica, he pulled out the bones and we laughed and I said “See you tomorrow.” Now I recognized Death as a cruel, unremitting and unremorseful enemy. I witnessed the permanency of Its decrees. Realized that anyone could be taken, even those you loved the most. And I experienced, for the first time, the Pain that that involved.

Bud Riley was a friend of mine

There was of course a service and a funeral. But I did not go. I was too little, and it was at the ‘Colored Church’. And we did not go there. This was another mystery that I did not understand and would not, could not understand fully for many years. Until after I had left. My father, I’m sure, put a substantial check into their coffers, and I’d like to think that he went to the funeral. But I do not know that.

And that was the last year we raised turkeys. We couldn’t find anyone who could or would do what Bud Riley did, and pretty soon the turkey barn became just a storehouse for old, unused farm equipment. The pigeons and the mice, the spiders and the coons took it over again, and we finally tore it down sometime after I left home.

So, yes, Beau, we raised turkeys when I was little. And it is a rich and a deep and complicated story. Ask me about it sometime.

Love, Dad